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From Scratch: Butter

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Cooking is all about experimenting. Sometimes you go to a restaurant and you get this phenomenal meal and you dream of how you can recreate it at home. Or you just dream about going back the next day and ordering it again. Whatver floats your boat.

Sometimes, when curiosity sets in, I find something that I just want to learn how to make. And to make up for all of the lazy cooking I do, I want to make it from the beginning. No cans or boxes of junk, just scratch made food. Sometimes when I tell people I can cook, I hear Ina in my head telling me that if I didn’t raise the chicken to make those scrambled eggs–I’m hardly a cook. So here’s to you Ina. I didn’t raise the cows or mine the salt fields for this recipe but it certainly took more effort than opening the fridge and grabbing a stick of butter. And stop being so sassy.

Making butter is actually really, really easy. You don’t have to put on a bonnet and go outside either. Bonus. And it only takes 2 ingredients. So it’s cheap. Well, you need a stand mixer…so if you don’t have one of those…it’s not that cheap. My bad.

Homemade Butter:
Yields about 2/3 cup

Ingredients:

1 pint heavy cream

1 t kosher salt

Directions:

In a stand mixer with the whisk attatchment on, pour cream and salt into mixing bowl

Set speed to Medium for about 5 minutes and scrape the bowl (Do I have to mention to turn the mixer off while scraping the bowl? Well, do that.)

While the butter is mixing, set aside a small mixing bowl or measuring cup and place a sieve (or strainer with a piece of cheesecloth) over it for draining the butter. Professional.

Set the speed to high for another 5 minutes. The consistency will look like whipped cream at first but as you continue to mix, the fat will start to separate from the liquid. This is good.

After about 5 minutes on high, the texture will look a bit chunky. This is good. Turn down the speed to medium for another 5 minutes or until you start to hear sloshing in the mixing bowl.

The liquid should separate from the solid at that point and you will have a good pile of butter inside your whisk. With clean hands, collect the butter and lightly press in your hands to squeeze out some extra liquid.

Roll butter into a small ball and place into the sieve you set aside. Lightly press down to release some excess liquid (That’s what she said.) Let stand for about 5 minutes.

Place into a ramekin or roll into a log on a piece of wax paper. Whatever works for you.

This is perfection on fresh bread. Perfection!

The mix in ingredients for this recipe are pretty endless. You could add in a Tablespoon of lemon zest and a handfull of fresh herbs, 1/2 cup of fresh raspberries with a pinch of sugar, a Tablespoon each of Cinnamon and Powdered sugar…Yes. I dream about butter combinations. There are dozens of us! Dozens!

If you do add these, I suggest you drain the butter first and then, with a fork, mix the ingredients together in a small bowl with the butter. You don’t want it to go soft (That’s what she said.)

If you’d like to see step by step instructions (in case you can’t read…ouch), I will direct you here. Pretty self-explanatory.